Tech companies in Boston: a product-company market, by the numbers and by name

This page is for readers who want Greater Boston's tech companies as a usable list: an engineer or job seeker mapping employers, a hospital or university choosing a software vendor, an investor, or a B2B seller whose customers are tech firms. It gives the Census count, how the market splits by industry, county and size, the public companies based here, and the local sources that name the rest.

The Boston tech market in one table

County Business Patterns (CBP), the Census Bureau's annual count of businesses with employees, puts 4,185 tech establishments in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metro Area (CBSA 14460) for 2023. Tech covers four NAICS industry groups: software publishers (5112), computer systems design and related services (5415), data processing, hosting and related services (518) and other information services (5191).

The Chicago metro has 6,852 tech establishments but 130,852 tech employees (tech companies in Chicago). Boston's sites are almost twice as large on average.

Product companies carry the jobs

Software publishers and data processing and hosting firms together employ 86,033 people, 57% of the metro's tech workforce. That's unlike Chicago or Dallas, where IT services firms hold most of the jobs. The 2,798 IT services establishments are still the majority by count, so a buyer looking for an implementation partner has plenty of choice.

Where: Middlesex County first

Employee counts marked not reported carry the Census Bureau's high-noise flag: to protect confidentiality it changed them by 5% or more, so they're left out here.

Middlesex County, which includes Cambridge, Waltham, Burlington and the Route 128 and I-495 suburbs, has 45% of the establishments and 51% of the jobs. Suffolk County, mostly the city of Boston, has 861 establishments averaging 57 employees, the largest sites in the region. Two New Hampshire counties are part of the metro, so a complete list spans two states' registries. The rows total 4,183; two establishments aren't shown by county.

Size

In bands: 3,313 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 568 with 20 to 99 and 304 with 100 or more. At 7.3% of the total, Boston's share of sites with 100 or more employees is more than twice Dallas-Fort Worth's 3.3%.

Public tech companies headquartered in Greater Boston

Software and internet companies, by revenue in each company's latest 10-K:

The region also hosts chip and hardware companies that the Census Bureau counts as manufacturers: Analog Devices in Wilmington ($11,019.7 million for the year to 1 November 2025), IPG Photonics in Marlborough ($1,003.8 million), Mercury Systems in Andover ($983.6 million for the year to 3 July 2026) and MACOM Technology Solutions in Lowell ($967.3 million for the year to 3 October 2025).

The City of Boston's 2025 annual financial report lists its ten largest employers: Massachusetts General Hospital (19,418), Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston University, Boston Children's Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess, Northeastern, Boston Medical Center, Dana-Farber, Harvard's graduate schools and Fidelity Investments (6,310). No tech company makes it. Those hospitals, universities and financial firms are the biggest local buyers of what Boston's tech firms sell.

Finding Boston tech companies by name

For legal entity checks, use the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth's corporations search, and New Hampshire's for Rockingham and Strafford county firms.

Choosing a Boston tech vendor or partner

1. Product or project? Boston has many product companies (5112, 518) and many implementers (5415). Decide which you need before you shortlist.
2. Check health and research experience. If you're a hospital or university, ask for references in your sector and, where patient data is involved, the vendor's readiness to sign a business associate agreement.
3. Use the state contracts. Vendors on an ITS contract have already been through state procurement, which can shorten a public buyer's process.
4. Look past the address. A Cambridge office may be a sales site for a company that builds elsewhere; ask where engineering and support sit.

Prospecting Boston tech companies

The 304 sites with 100 or more employees buy through procurement, security review and several stakeholders; expect quarters, not weeks. The 568 with 20 to 99 often have a single functional owner with budget, which makes them the fastest mid-market segment. The 3,313 under 20 are founder-led. Good triggers here include a funding round, a new product line, a hospital or university customer announcement, and a move between Cambridge, the Seaport and the 128 suburbs.

Worked example: a B2B SaaS marketing agency

Illustrative example. The company, people and fees are fictional, to show the method.

Charles Row Marketing (charlesrow.example) runs demand generation for business software companies whose marketing team is a few people. It targets software publishers and data processing firms with 20 to 249 employees in Middlesex and Suffolk counties.

• Establishments with 20 to 249 employees: 377 + 191 + 168 = 736.
• Software publishers and data processing firms are 1,134 of 4,185 establishments (27%), so about 200 of those 736.
• Middlesex and Suffolk hold 66% of establishments: about 130.
• The agency assumes half sell to businesses with a marketing team of five or fewer: about 65 accounts.

Reading 130 websites and LinkedIn pages to find the ones with small marketing teams takes days. Bebop takes "Boston and Cambridge B2B software companies with 20 to 249 employees and a small marketing team" and returns matches with a playbook for each.

Subject: Pipeline after [Company]'s [signal: Series B, new product]

Hi [first name],

Congratulations on [signal]. Software companies at your stage usually need pipeline to grow faster than the marketing team does, and the gap shows up a quarter later in sales.

We run demand programs for Boston B2B software teams of two to five marketers, so you get a team without the hiring cycle. Would a look at what we'd run in your first 90 days help?

[Your name], Charles Row Marketing

What the count covers

CBP counts establishments, single locations with at least one paid employee, for the week of March 12, 2023. A company with offices in Boston and Burlington counts twice, owner-only consultancies aren't counted, and in-house tech teams at hospitals, universities and asset managers count under their employers' industries. Chipmakers and hardware companies are manufacturers, so they're outside the count even though they're tech companies by any everyday definition.

Next step: research each account before you write with account research.